I have never been to teacher school, so I really have no idea what all they learn in there. I had long assumed, however, that one of the very first lessons, it would be that, once in the classroom, the teacher, s/he could not force, the public-school tots and tykes, to recite the pledge of allegiance. Because the United States Supreme Court, it had said so. And unequivocally. And way back in 1943. In West Virginia v. Barnette. And with some pretty ringing language, too.

To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.

We think the action of the local authorities in compelling the flag salute and pledge transcends constitutional limitations on their power and invades the sphere of intellect and spirit which it is the purpose of the First Amendment to our Constitution to reserve from all official control.

But I guess that just isn't in the lesson plan, West Virginia v. Barnette, there in the teaching schools. Or, if it is, the teachers, when they come out of the schools, they decide they Just Don't Care. Because, just about every day now, there comes some tube, with some news in it, about some teacher, somewhere, yanking a tot out of a chair, or heaving a tyke right out of the school, because the child, as is his or her perfect right, declines to stand and chant gibberish to a piece of cloth.